The project IDEAL investigates the design of an embodied, humanoid robot as a cultural broker that mediates young children’s collaboration. As children start schooling, they come with a unique way of thinking and doing that are embedded implicitly and explicitly in their home cultures. Also, being able to work with others is essential for gaining confidence in STEM and achieving STEM success. The IDEAL team experiments with robot brokering in a socio-technical triad of a robot and two children coming from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In this setting, the robot mediates the children to tell their personal stories and work together to co-create artifacts while they practice early academic skills foundational to STEM learning.

NSF Awards: 1623561